Simulated dissection

   Although I have never been to Med. School and worked on cadavers, I do have a medical background. I am a Combat Medic in the Army Reserves. I am a Nationally Certified EMT, and have also taken the Army’s version of EMT. In the civilian sector many ambulance calls revolve around the elderly. In the military you deal with battlefield trauma. I have been through multiple types of training scenarios that included simulated dummies and live patients. The Army loves simulated dummies; they think it is the greatest thing. I am not allowed to discuss my live patient training in detail—secret squirrel stuff—but I can still compare live vs. fake. At the end of military training exercises the cadre stages a mass casualty event. We as medics enter the scene, assess the situation, treat patients, evacuate them, and call in choppers or a ground evac. During these training exercises many patients are dummies hooked up to computers that bring the plastic stiff to life—they breathe, moan and squirt fake blood. We also have live patients with fake injuries; they too moan and squirt fake blood. We apply tourniquets, real bandages, and on the dummies insert breathing apparatuses, and sometimes initiate a cricoid-thyroidotomy. And if the live patient is presenting as having a breathing problem we tape a breathing apparatus to them or tell the cadre that we would in real life secure the airway. Now I have also been in a lab, and applied the same training to living beings. “In the Crimes of Anatomy” article by Mary Roach, one of the students when asked if he felt the cadaver training was necessary, he replied that it was indeed, but sometimes felt that it was a waste of time (55). What he should have added was that it was not a waste of his time, but a waste of a cadaver. In other words, with the crazy technology and simulation logistics that the Army has, I learned just as well with that as I did in the lab. The lab was not only un-necessary but a waste of life. Of course the Army wants you to see that on a living being techniques such as applying a tourniquet are effective. Let me be the judge of that when I am the Middle East trying to save my buddies limb with a tourniquet. If I do save his limb, I have my training to thank, and I know a tourniquet actually works. But let’s eliminate that step in the lab, my simulation training is sufficient to learn how to apply a tourniquet, and view that its application is effective. As far as dealing with death, it only takes a couple trips through Baghdad, or a military hospital to learn a thing or two about death.
  I understand dissection of a cadaver is a little bit different from my scenario, but the point I wanted to make is that there has been huge advancements in simulation technology. Should it fully replace cadaver dissection? I do not think so, at least until technology excels to an exact comparable level. However, I do not think all med students should attend a cadaver class. I think that should depend on what field or specialty they plan to work in.

Domalski, Josh